Who, among those blessed with extra cash, doesn’t remember their first Mac? Or first iPod? Or first iPhone? Or first iPad? Or, for that matter, their first visit to a sleek, modernist Apple store? Or first appointment at the Genius Bar?

Will Steve Jobs’ death (on Oct. 5) restore us to agnosticism when it comes to electronic marvels? Many had become faithful converts to the power of high-tech. We had faith that each invention would be better than the last. Apple’s product announcements had teleological force—we needed to wait only a little before another brilliant and stylish bit of Apple wizardry paradigm-shifted our lives—yet again. And we were justified in our faith. Revolutionary products did arrive. And life did change. For the better.

Surely, Jobs belongs on the shortlist of American, if not the world’s, cultural heroes. Our grandchildren will learn of Jobs in their American history classes. In general, people are suckers for great men and women. Early historians understood that we are fascinated by great individuals; these historians did not so much write biographies as produce hagiographies, distorting what could be known about their subjects and adding details to make them appear less prone to human failings than they actually were. Among the sacred texts, the Hebrew Bible is one of the few that resists burnishing the lives it recounts. This is a strength of the Hebrew Bible; its authors understood that it is through their faults that we recognize great heroes as fellow human beings.

A close friend of Steve Jobs, Dr. Dean Ornish, understood this too, saying, Steve “was very human… He was so much more of a real person than most people know. That’s what made him so great.” Jobs was imperfect like most of us schmoes. His sister, Mona Simpson, wrote a “fictional” novel, A Regular Guy, whose main character bears many similarities to her iconic brother. Reviewers of the book noted that it was not an unalloyed portrait. Even his worst enemy, however, cannot deny that Jobs was blessed with unusual leadership and vision.

He belongs, then, on that list of individuals that the 19th Century Scottish writer, Thomas Carlyle, used to illustrate his “great man” theory. This theory views Western history as the playground of men and women who, thanks to their genius-level scientific or artistic talents, or beyond-brilliant military and leadership instincts, or ground-breaking philosophical or spiritual gifts have impacted millions, even billions of lives over the course of their own generations and beyond. Carlyle speculated that history could be explained by the actions of these “greats.” He wrote, “The soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.” Their extra-ordinary attributes, like “the light which enlightens” is not “a kindled lamp only” but rather “a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven.”

The author (Steven Levy) of the 1994 book, Insanely Great, chronicling the birth of the Mac, described the light cast by Jobs: “He was the most passionate leader one could hope for, a motivating force without parallel.” A co-founder of Pixar (Edwin Catmull) commented that over the course of the four years during which his company struggled to make “Toy Story,” Jobs never flagged in his determination: “You need a lot more than vision — you need a stubbornness, tenacity, belief and patience to stay the course…In Steve’s case, he pushes right to the edge, to try to make the next big step forward.”

These traits—Jobs’ vision, stubbornness, tenacity, belief, and patience to stay the course, pushing right to the edge, driven to make the next big step—were surely shared by other “great men and women,” like Winston Churchill or Muhammad or Isaac Newton or Martha Graham, all of whom excelled in the face of outrageous odds and legions of naysayers.

Carlyle also held that the thoughts of “great men and women” were “the parents of the actions they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and actual.” Religion was not, for Carlyle, defined by creeds or by the houses of worship to which they belonged. Religion meant, rather, that which these great men or women believed, that they kept close to their hearts, that was “in all cases the primary thing” determining their practical actions. If one adopts Carlyle’s definition, then the “chief fact” about Jobs, his “primary thing,” his religion, was this: “Stay hungry, stay foolish,” and “don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

A contemporary of Carlyle, the German philosopher, Hegel, embraced a similar view of the role of superlative individuals in history. But for him, great people served as vehicles for the progressive unfolding of God-Spirit, or Geist in the world. Heroes, he wrote, are not agents who act independently of the Whole; rather, they serve as agents for Geist in moving history forward. This movement, according to Hegel, is inevitable.

Indeed, there will be those who—out of a personal dislike for Jobs, or because they are strongly attached to the notion of equality and thus resist recognizing that some human beings make greater contributions than others—will opine in Hegelian mode that if Jobs hadn’t brought forth an abundance of culture-changing gadgets, someone else would have. Or they will turn to the common 20th Century position that we are all products of our social space and that the contributions of all “great men and women” would have been impossible without the prior existence of this space.

But the fact that it could have been some other individual produced by our current social space, actually underscores the truth that, regardless of possible competitors, Jobs was the one, the singular channel.

Goodnight sweet prince of tech. We’ll miss you lots. We miss you already.

Science and theology are perceived, by some, as sitting on opposite banks of an abyss. They assume that the twain never can (or should) meet. But the separation between science and theology is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of the West. Until the Renaissance, science was barely more than a descriptive discipline, while theology, considered the queen of the sciences, was a richly speculative and complex field of endeavor.

Fortunately, theology (yes—theology!) came to the rescue of science by providing it with a new understanding of reality. Theology (yes—theology!) provided science with the intellectual and conceptual tools it needed to get out of a deep rut and push forward with several important discoveries. These discoveries, in turn, allowed the development of technologies that now seem as essential to us as air or water. What–life without a computer? Without Wi-Fi? A cell phone? Pleeease!

This shift in human beings’ way of looking at reality occurred long enough ago that we’ve mostly forgotten that we haven’t always grasped reality the way we do today. Here’s a key illustration: there was a time when it was “common knowledge” that the earth moved around the sun. Peoples in the ancient world conceived of reality such that, for them, astral bodies such as the sun and moon rotated in orderly and eternally-static circles around the earth. Based on simple observation this view of reality made sense. The things they could see appeared to revolve around them while the ground on which they stood seemed solid and stationary. Today, of course, we know that while we tend to perceive motion relative to where we ourselves stand, we may, from the perspective of someone else, be moving.

So how did our mindset change? A 15th theologian by the name of Nicholas de Cusa (1401 – 1464) reached several novel conclusions about perspective. Some scholars still refuse to count his contributions as scientific because, technically-speaking, he was a theologian. But others, like philosophy professor, Karsten Harries, the author of Infinity and Perspective, credit him with destroying the belief in the geocentric theory of the cosmos inherited by pre-Renaissance science from the ancient world.

Thanks to Cusa, Harries argues in his book, Copernicus was able to break out of this mindset, a mindset that had persisted millenia.

So what was Cusa’s insight, exactly? It underwhelms us moderns but, in the 15th century, his insight was revolutionary. Cusa had been sent by the Pope to negotiate a reconciliation between the Greek Church and the Roman Church. On the return sea-voyage, his ship was heading home from Greece when he realized that if he couldn’t see the shore, he wouldn’t have any idea the ship was moving; instead, he would perceive the ship as sitting still in the water. He also realized that if he were not a passenger but, rather, someone standing on the shoreline watching the ship, he would, from his vantage point on land, perceive the ship as moving. Two perspectives (the one on the ship, the other on land) led to two experiences of movement.

In his theological work, On Learned Ignorance, Cusa wrote that the centers “by which we orient ourselves are fictions, created by us” to reflect the standpoint of the observer. Multiple centers of perspective, he realized, were not only possible but equally valid. Applying this insight to the universe, he argued that a person standing on Mars or on the moon was just as likely as an earthling to consider his or her piece of rock to be the center of the cosmos. Cusa concluded that the universe “will have its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere, so to speak; for God, who is everywhere and nowhere, is its circumference and center.”

By undermining the idea of a single-center based perspective, Cusa called into question any cosmology based on just one center. His clarity about the possibility of multiple centers and perspectives took him even further than Copernicus and Kepler would go a century later with their heliocentric cosmology. His influence was so sweeping and long-lasting that Kepler and Descartes acknowledged him as a precursor.

The Cusa-Copernicus-Kepler scenario offers more than just intellectual interest. If Harries is spot-on about Cusa’s contribution to science (historians of science, do you care to weigh in?), then there’s an important lesson to take away from this fascinating chapter in science-theology relations. The lesson is that if scientists like Copernicus and Kepler had refused to take seriously the theological writings of a pious genius like Cusa, then we might all have had to wait a lot longer for modern science.

Theologians and scientists live in the same world and, as fellow human beings, they’re charmed by mystery and seized by wonder. They ask many of the same questions about the world. They simply turn to different resources in their attempts to answer those questions, resources which need not be labeled incompatible. But as long as scientists and theologians sit on opposite banks of an abyss (created ex nihilo), no conversation will take place. Let’s start building a bridge, shall we?

Think you’re number one?Who doesn’t?Are you a narcissist? Hey, who isn’t? After all, our interior world is most vivid to ourselves. Who could possibly know and care for our well-being and happiness better than ourselves?A tidy amount of Me-Centrism is desirable (we Americans prefer to call it self-esteem), but in sloppy-sized doses, it turns into self-absorption. Result: lack of interest in, and lack of concern for others. Not you, you say?When was the last time you stepped out of the internal monologue a-buzzing in your head or the fatigue from a long day‘s work to look the checkout clerk at Dominick’s in the eye?You know, like he was a real person worthy of your attention (which, of course, he is)?And did you say, “Hello, how are you today?”And were really interested in the answer?Or did you look away before he finished telling you?

A little thing, sure, this saying hello, how are you.But imagine how different our every-day would be if we stepped out of our heads and shook off our tiredness just long enough to treat each other like each one of us mattered.Imagine the ordinary wonderfulness of a simple “after you” as we stepped onto the bus or walked into the elevator.Or letting a car (or two) merge ahead of us on a clogged freeway, or smiling at the stranger on the street for no good reason, or paying our frenenmy an unsolicited compliment, or turning off our cell phone to give a friend our full attention.With all that free-flowing kindness, especially in these hard economic times, who knows what we could achieve?Our quest for meaning could literally end.We would all find peace of mind.Messianism would have come to pass.

The great religious faith traditions ask their followers, at some point during the year, to step-out of their daily routines and orient themselves toward something greater.To demonstrate that they mean it and are 100% committed to the exercise, these followers are asked to sacrifice something—in other words, to give up something they value, like a cow, or money, or food.The act of having given up something serves as a prod of sorts, a powerful reminder (lest one slack off) to reflect on one’s relationship with the divine.This giving-up takes place in community so that one gets swept up in a great shift of life-as-usual.The new normal is a common life focused on God. Whether one is taking part in the one-day fast of Yom Kippur or the month-long fast of Ramadan or the surrendering of something of one’s choosing for the forty days of Lent, the giving-up has a definite time-table with well-advertised and ritually-marked start and end dates.

But what about those who aren’t followers of such traditions but want to engage in a similar kind of spiritual exercise (exercise in the sense of an intentional and disciplined activity)? Yow!That’s harder.After all, you’ll give up something without any kind of communal or ritual help.That’s like deciding to give up cigarettes without a support group and without nicotine patches.Still, for those who are up to the challenge, it could be even more rewarding.

So let’s dare to give up something for Lent. How about Me-Centrism? Give up Me-Centrism until April 12 and orient yourself toward God. The phenomenologist and ethicist, Emmanuel Levinas, taught that we might, in the act of treating others as human beings instead of objects, discover a passageway to the extraordinary, the infinite, the transcendent. No promises though. Hopefully, even if you don’t find that passageway, the gift of a simple human interaction is gift enough.And should the checkout clerk or the passenger on the bus respond to your friendly gaze by looking at you like you’re crazy, or looking past you like you don’t exist—well, you’ll know you did your part. And no one can ask more than that.

Oaths. This blog’s previous entry, “#6 So help me God“, described how, for a truly-honest person, oaths “give rise to no new duties.” For such persons, oaths “merely serve to awaken” the conscience. In some other world, truly-honest persons may exist. But let’s face it, that world is not our world. No perfectly, completely, 100%, all of the time, 24/7, honest person has ever travelled this world’s byways (some would argue that Jesus, the Buddha, and President Obama are exceptions). No matter how hard we work at it (if we even work at it that hard), we swear to do such-and-such, we promise to do something-or-other, and then—shall we admit it?—we renege.

And so, given that we don’t qualify for 100%-truly-honest-person status, oaths are for us after all. Oaths are intended for what Moses Mendelssohn called the “ordinary, middling sort” of person, or for everyone, since we must all “be numbered among this class.” Okay, we may take exception to being called ordinary, middling sorts of persons, but in our most clear-eyed moments, we know that, more often than we like to admit, we are “weak, irresolute, and vacillating.” Sure, we have principles, and sure, we have the best of intentions to keep our word but we sometimes (often?) lack the will to follow through, especially when the going gets tough.

When Mendelssohn says we need oaths to God because we all qualify as ordinary, middling sorts of persons, he is making a claim about what we, human beings, are like. In technical language, he’s making an anthropological claim. His (philosophical) anthropology shaped his theology; it shaped the way he understood God and the God-human relationship.

For Mendelssohn, God is a witness not only of our “every word and assertion,” but of all our thoughts and most secret sentiments. And since God is privy to our every word, assertion, thought and secret sentiment, God is privy to our every “transgression of his most holy will.” Armed with this knowledge, God allows no transgression to go unpunished.

Such a view of God remains a common one. After all, we want the world to be fair; we want good guys to finish first and bad guys to get their just deserts. But since we’re familiar with plenty of bad guys who never get their just deserts, we assume or conjecture that God administers justice in the afterlife.

Universalists (by affiliation or sympathy) take a different approach to the fairness/justice conumdrum. They believe that God is simply too good to punish anyone. But like most of us, the Universalists want the world to be fair. And so they also believe that although God doesn’t punish us after we die, our consciences torment us whenever we do something like break a promise.Thanks to our consciences, we’re punished during our lifetimes. The Universalists have what’s called a high anthropology. They assume that human beings have fully-active, sensitive consciences.They assume that we feel remorseful about the wrongs we commit.

Most religionists reject the Universalist approach. They might even suspect Universalists of being immoral people. That’s because they wonder why anyone who doesn’t believe in God’s punishment would ever be motivated enough to make the kinds of sacrifices required to do the ‘right’ thing.

When Mendelssohn explains that we need the assistance of an oath to God, it’s because he thinks we need a moral boost to keep our word. He’s got a lower anthropology than the Universalists. He thinks we need to transform a moment when our will is being tested into a decisive moment.He thinks we need to transform a moment when we’d rather procrastinate into a moment when we resist every excuse under the sun (and there are no new excuses). He thinks we need the assistance of a pledge to God, a “so help me God,” to shore up our resolve, to “gather up all the force and emphasis, with which the recollection of God, the all-righteous” can move us to do what we must.

So what is your anthropology?

Does fear of being busted by God motivate you to make good (more often) on your promises? Or is giving your word to God (without fear of punishment) enough? Hmm. Really?

What does your God demand of you? Of human beings in general? How does your anthropology influence your views about our ability to honor those demands?

Do we administer CPR to God or leave God for dead? Even after the Holocaust, the Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber, refused to turn his back on God and walk (or run) away. Why not? He explained his thinking in his book, Eclipse of God:

“[‘God’] is the most heavy-laden of all human words.None has become so soiled, so mutilated.

Just for this reason I may not abandon it.

Generations of men have laid the burden of their anxious lives upon this word and weighed it to the ground; it lies in the dust and bears their whole burden.The races of man with their religious factions have torn the word to pieces; they have killed for it and died for it, and it bears their fingermarks and their blood.

Where might I find a word like it to describe the highest!

If I took the purest, most sparkling concept…I could not capture the presence of Him whom the generations of men have honoured and degraded with their awesome living and dying.I do indeed mean Him whom the hell-tormented and heaven-storming generations of men mean.Certainly, they draw caricatures and write ‘God’ underneath; they murder one another and say ‘in God’s name’…

And just for this reason is not the word ‘God,’ the word of appeal, the word which has become a name, consecrated in all human tongues for all times?

We must esteem those who interdict it because they rebel against the injustice and wrong which are so readily referred to ‘God’ for authorization.But we may not give it up…

We cannot cleanse the word ‘God’ and we cannot make it whole; but, defiled and mutilated as it is, we can raise it from the ground and set it over an hour of great care.”

– Martin Buber, Eclipse of God (London:Gollancz, 1953), 17-18.

The Naked Theologian

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